Spiritual Formation

Anxiety has plagued me ever since I immigrated to the US when I was nine. Like an imaginary friend accompanying me wherever I go, anxiety whispers questions of doubt and fear.

I woke up the other day with two papers due, 10 text messages that deserved thorough and urgent responses, three meetings to plan, and an achy neck that desperately needed physical therapy. I knew what I had to do. I walked to the park, put on some worship music, opened my Bible, and prayed.

God loves to talk with us! And the more we become familiar with conversing with him about the small things in life, the less scary it is to listen to him for the bigger things.

When the Lord calls something “holy,” he’s saying it’s set aside, unique, not to be taken for granted. So a Sabbath can be defined as an intentional choice to stop working and focus on what’s holy.

Ultimately, prayer is about more than just feeling good and having God solve our problems. As we rediscover the wonder and true nature of prayer, may it deepen our walk with Jesus!

What if we had more childlike wonder in our lives? How would our interactions with God be different? How would we interact with family and professors and classmates differently? What would we talk and dream about?

I am keenly aware that our bodies have absorbed a gauntlet of grief throughout this traumatic year. And some of us, for the first time since March 2020, are stepping onto campuses that have been closed for over a year. How then, when we are committed to seeing God’s kingdom come on campus, do we enter NSO well?

Last-minute final papers, weekly discussion posts, and 12-page reports that seem to extend forever—don’t worry, I know the feeling too. For those of us who are students (and some of us who aren’t as well), there are some days—maybe even many days—when writing feels like a chore, something on a checklist to cross off.

Even in many places across the country where COVID restrictions are being lifted, and campuses are reopening soon, many things are still difficult with no easy solutions. We can’t avoid the darkness that surfaced in the last year and a half. It can feel overwhelming.

In an age of world-class preachers available at the click of a button, why should anyone bother going to a local church in-person and listen to a perhaps less gifted pastor exposit Scripture?